So I've been finding a lot of extra work recently (which is good, since the little one is adding new expenses).

I was contacted by a very talented photographer, Nathan Lindstrom, to redesign his site. He and a friend had been working for a while trying to design the site in javascript, but ran into a few snags trying to get the user interaction just right. Right out the gate I asked him if he had anything against Flash as a platform. I had seen some very compelling Flash sites for photographers. I told he we could make the site very dynamic (completely powered by a site XML). In two days we have gotten further than the previous Javascript site.

It is actually an interesting problem. He had presented me with a single screenshot of the mockup working and the javascript source code for the project (which didn't run). If it wasn't for that screenshot, this project would have taken a lot longer since we can't meet in person.

The project has also been good for me since I haven't been working much in Flash recently (focusing on Flex). Since the site is so visually driven, it made more sense to build it all in Flash. I quickly remembered all the quirks of working in Flash with as3. I try my hardest to spend all my coding time in FlashDevelop and outside the designer.

It's been fun because he wanted a personalized scrollbar, and somehow I'd never build one before (that grew and shrank based on content). It's a fun bit of geometry and logic to get it working just right.